Water

Taking down the pro whip antenna after it had been up for a couple of days in the rain I noticed that the balun  appeared to be full of water! After undoing the screws on the casing  and prising off the "superglued" lid,sure enough it was wet inside. To be fair the maker does not claim the antenna is waterproof and it certainly isn't! I need to find a way of sealing it up. I think the only solution is to fill the casing with something waterproof. Maybe silicon sealant. For now I have emptied out the water and used the YL's hairdryer to dry it out!

6 metres

I have read several reports of the Es season opening on 6 metres and people making some contacts. But until today, each time I tried the band it  was dead. However this evening I made a couple of contacts on 6m ssb into Italy. It was a welcome chance to try my Icom IC7000 and tri band vertical on 6 for the first time!

Antenna Repairs

After my antenna problems on the weekend I was keen to drop my wire doublet and see if I could sort things out.
The Western HF 10 commercial doublet I use is extremely well made and hasn't had any problems in the 18 months or so that it has been up. Although I installed a small a small centre support to anchor the balun that is at the end of the 450ohm ladder line the ladder line itself is still under some strain, particularly in high winds. I suspected therefore that the problem was either the ladder line or the balun itself. The designer does suggest the antenna is fully supported in the centre but this isn't really possible at my QTH.

Using my trusty multimeter I checked the antenna for continuity and sure enough the "earth" leg of the doublet was not connected the to "earth" side of the ladder line. I then disconnected the bottom of the ladderline  but one part broke off in my hand!

OK so this was the problem, I stripped back the offending piece of wire and reattached to the balun.

However, back in the shack and testing the antenna showed all was still not well. I dropped the antenna again and did what i should have done after the repair, used the multimeter again and could then see the "earth " of the antenna was still not connected. In fact there was another break in the same wire a few centimeters up. More stripping and re-attaching to the balun and things were back to normal. One side of the ladder line is now slightly shorter than the other but this doesnt seem to cause any noticeable problems. Still I think i will have to replace the whole section sooner or later.

Murphy's Law

Back at the home QTH this morning with an unexpected couple of hours free to play radio, mainly due to the wet weather.
Switched on the rig and linear, tuned up for 40 metres and worked a couple of special event stations taking part in the "mills on the air" weekend. Then I noticed the linear "flashing over" and an erratic SWR reading on my doublet.  On  receive it was like a rapid QSB effect.
So I had to close down and investigate. I checked all the patch leads, they were fine, then went out to the antenna and put my dummy load at the antenna end to check my coax feed, again all ok. So the problem is the antenna itself- not surprising with the high winds and heavy rain we have had over the last few days. It was too wet and windy to drop the antenna today so I am hoping to get some fine weather and time in the evenings this week to investigate. In the meantime I can operate 15 metres and above on the vertical.

Logging

At my home station I still use a paper logbook, I guess I am old fashioned. I have tried logging software over the years but never really got into it. When operating at the YL's QTH I have been doing quite a bit of PSK31 operating using my Acer Netbook PC. I thought as the computer was on my lap, why not use it for logging too? So at this QTH  I am computerised!  I chose the Winlog32 logging software by G0CUZ and have been getting on with it OK. I like the way it uploads my QSOs to EQSL automatically. It also produces statistics of my QSOs so I know that I have worked 33 countries from here, not bad as my operating time is very limited and on some bands I have S9+5db noise level.

 I was surprised to see that I had operated 40 metres quite a bit from here. It is the noisiest band and my 6 metre long pro whip vertical is not very efficient but I have managed some contacts.

So will I go computerised logging at my home station? I am still not sure!!